This is a rose in my garden that I call the Mystery Rose. It is has been about seven years since I planted it. I purchased it from a local nursery with the tag of Tropicana. It was supposed to be an orange, pinkish, yellow rose with a very strong fragrance. It never bloomed. It sent out a few stray stems. It tried to die. I coaxed it along but no avail. It would come up from the ground every spring. Finally, I began to cut it down. But it would come back up. Then one spring nothing happened. so I planted another rose bush about a foot away from it to balance out the bed. Well it came back up last year and bloomed. It was a beautiful red rose. This year it was outstanding. It grew to about 3 feet and was covered in roses. The white blooming rose bush next to it even made this red beauty even more noticeable. There are several lessons I guess I could take from this episode from my garden. Sometimes the results of mistakes and failures or disappointments could bring us more happiness than we had anticipated. Or as a friend of mine would say, "Just roll with the flow" what ever that means. May the unexpected in mine or your life bring us joy.
